Although he announced Detroit Tigers baseball games on WJR radio for more than four decades, Ernie Harwell had no idea how popular he was until Tom Monaghan, owner of the Tigers and WJR, tried to fire him. When the station unilaterally declared that the 1991 season would be his last, Detroiters protested—and not just baseball fans. At one Detroit Red Wings hockey game, fans chanted, “We want Ernie” loud enough to shake the rafters. Harwell returned to the Tigers in 1993.
Growing up in tiny Washington, Ga., Harwell suffered from a speech impediment, said The Washington Post. Elocution lessons cleared up the problem, but he could never overcome his athletic shortcomings. As a child, “I wanted to play baseball in the worst way,” he said, “and that’s the way I did play it.” The family later moved to Atlanta, and after his father was paralyzed during brain surgery, Harwell took a paper route to help the family make ends meet. One of his customers was Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind.
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